The desire to maintain a youthful appearance by reducing wrinkles and fine lines in the skin is an important issue in human society. Many techniques have been designed to achieve the above issue, one of which is skin rejuvenation using, for example, fractional photo-thermolysis. This fractional photo-thermolysis may, for example, be used for treatment of lines, wrinkles, unevenness of pigmentation and dyschromia. Fractional photo-thermolysis is based on creating micro-zones of damage inside skin tissue within areas or volumes of unaffected skin tissue. The treatment either removes (ablative treatment) or thermally damages skin tissue in the micro-zones. The type of treatment, the density of the micro-zones and the depth of the micro-zones are chosen in relation to the skin treatment required and the type of skin to be treated.
A device for such fractional photo-thermolysis treatment is disclosed in US patent application US 2012/0197357. In this patent application, an apparatus, in particular a handheld apparatus, is disclosed for delivering optical energy. The apparatus includes an optical pattern generator inside the housing, which includes a rotatable component configured to continually rotate about a rotation axis in a single direction and to deflect the optical beam during rotation to divide the electromagnetic radiation into pulses that propagate from the housing toward the skin surface and form the fractional pattern at the skin surface.
The device as shown in the cited US patent application is typically used for an area treatment process in which the device employs means to scan one or more optical energy beams across a portion of tissue, and deliver the plurality of optical energy beams to a portion of tissue to be treated as the handheld apparatus is moved across the skin surface. Area treatment processes are often used to apply the fractional photo-thermolysis treatment over a specific area, for example, for treatment of unevenness of the skin tissue, and pigmentation and dischromia issues of the skin tissue. Alternatively, photo-thermolysis treatment may be desired as a line treatment process in which a user applies the treatment mainly across a wrinkle and/or a fine line. However, the known fractional photo-thermolysis apparatus is not configured for the line treatment process.
Consequently, a drawback of the known fractional photo-thermolysis apparatus is that it is not suitable or at least not optimal for the line treatment process.